Stamps are slammed on the title page, label pockets gummed to the rear pastedown, dust wrappers discarded, covers vulcanised in plastic - or, in those days, a toffee-brown buckram tough enough to withstand acid.

To start I went for an enormous rack of ribs, which would easily have made a main course in its own right, slow-cooked so the fat had rendered down to produce that lovely stickiness which gums your teeth together.

Origin

In the sense ‘a sticky secretion produced by some trees and shrubs’, gum can be traced all the way back to an ancient Egyptian word kemai. Among its more recent meanings it has been applied to a type of sweet pastille (as in ‘fruit gum’) since the early 19th century, and to chewing gum from the mid 19th century in the US. The other type of gum, inside your mouth, comes from an Old English word meaning ‘the inside of the mouth or throat’. Gumshoe is an American term for a detective. Dating from the early 20th century, it relates to rubber-soled shoes, called gumshoes or sneakers, suitable for doing something stealthily.

verb (gums, gumming, gummed)

They made the leathery meal soft enough to swallow by alternately sucking on and gumming it.

My 10-month-old son is still more interested in gumming the keyboard than in exploring educational possibilities on the Web, but I look forward to the day when I can help him connect with his world by connecting to the Internet.

And I could only stare, my mouth hung open dumbly like a cow gumming its cud.

Origin

In the sense ‘a sticky secretion produced by some trees and shrubs’, gum can be traced all the way back to an ancient Egyptian word kemai. Among its more recent meanings it has been applied to a type of sweet pastille (as in ‘fruit gum’) since the early 19th century, and to chewing gum from the mid 19th century in the US. The other type of gum, inside your mouth, comes from an Old English word meaning ‘the inside of the mouth or throat’. Gumshoe is an American term for a detective. Dating from the early 20th century, it relates to rubber-soled shoes, called gumshoes or sneakers, suitable for doing something stealthily.

noun

But by gum, he was going to shout at them a lot and ladle on the tough love to get them there.

Apparently the fame went right to this fella's noggin, by gum, as his hollerin' and harp-playin' have now become a permanent fixture at Barfly's bluegrass nights as well.

Cutting back on emissions (by agreeing to the Kyoto Protocols), the report contended, would put a damper on the economic wealth that will save us from hurricanes that might take lots of lives in poorer countries but not here, by gum.

Origin

In the sense ‘a sticky secretion produced by some trees and shrubs’, gum can be traced all the way back to an ancient Egyptian word kemai. Among its more recent meanings it has been applied to a type of sweet pastille (as in ‘fruit gum’) since the early 19th century, and to chewing gum from the mid 19th century in the US. The other type of gum, inside your mouth, comes from an Old English word meaning ‘the inside of the mouth or throat’. Gumshoe is an American term for a detective. Dating from the early 20th century, it relates to rubber-soled shoes, called gumshoes or sneakers, suitable for doing something stealthily.